2006 Pacific Coast Sectional Championships

Roseville, CA

Event Reports and Photos

Overview

Normally, we would not cover the a sectional championships, but
sectional championships this year are the first qualifying competitions in the
U.S. to be judged under the new system, and we wanted to see first hand the last
dress rehearsal before the Nationals Championships. To support competition
at the two arenas at Nationals, two complete hardware systems were purchased by
U.S. Figure Skating. With additional spare components, this hardware was
split into three smaller system that were distributed among the three sectional
championships. These systems included instant replay for the technical
panels, but not for the judges.

Other than the practical issues related to use of the new system
and hardware, Coast was a well run competition that was well organized by the
host club and the chief referee, Jessica Gaynor. As a dress rehearsal for
Nationals the glass was half full. There were numerous glitches that one
would have hoped would not have occurred in the last major test before
Nationals, but nothing so major, to indicate National will not be conducted
successfully.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing use of the new system
demonstrated at Coast was controlling the time it takes to conduct a
competition. The competition was scheduled to allow nearly three minutes
between skaters, and yet the schedule could not be maintained. The Novice
events proved the most troublesome, with the competition falling behind up to
one hour on most days, but generally catching up during the Junior and Senior
events.

Competition delays were invariably due to lengthy element
reviews, which in some cases extended in excess of five minutes. Should
this experience be repeated at Nationals, there are going to be a lot of awfully
bored people in the arenas. Further, Coast (as did the other sectionals) made
clear cost effective competitions cannot be held if as much time is spent on
element reviews as on the skating itself.

The next major issue that potentially could wreak havoc on
competition under the new system is the handling of protests. ISU
Communication 1350, issued in October 2005, opened the door to the correction of
calls, and revision of results up to 24 hours after the award ceremony for and
event. The handling of protest and correction of results at Coast was
handled on an ad hoc basis. According to Charlie Cyr, Pacific Coast vice
president, an explicit policy governing protests and correction of calls and
results will be in place for the National Championships in St. Louis.

There were several cases at Coast were changes to results
changed results. In Senior pairs, changes to a lift and spin level in the
short program switched the results of fourth and fifth place in the Short
Program and required a complete redrawing of the Free Skating start order the
next day. In Junior Ladies Short Program, the identification of a
combination spin after the segment added 4.3 points to the score of Caroline
Zhang, moving her up from seventh place to third, clearly illustrating the
importance of getting the calls correct, and the potential consequences of
getting them wrong. The final results of the Junior Dance event also were
changed for first and second place. In that case, the skaters had the
medals around their necks only to be told by the awards photographer of the
change in results.

In a minor software glitch, the results of the Novice Men's
event had to be taken down after being posted, and the results for both the
Novice Men and Ladies had to be recalculated, a glitch that left the results of
the Novice events in limbo for over two hours after the events. This
problem was caused by incorrect values in the software event database for the
Novice events.

Another significant issue that affected several skaters, was the
handling of the final windup and exit of spins in the upright positions.
ISU rules call for the final upright position in a spin to be counted as a
position if more than three rotations are executed. In several cases,
skaters who were slow in exiting their spins had the final upright rotations
counted as positions, which changed the intended spin types to combinations
spins. Since the spin types are specified in the sort programs, these
skaters found one or more of their spin types discounted as illegal elements due
to this error. This is the latest example of how simple errors in programs
result in extremely harsh penalties in the skater's scores. Although this
affected the results of some skaters, fortunately it did not affect any medal
placements or selection to advance to Nationals.

It will be interesting to see, if the dress rehearsals at
sectionals have the intended effect of producing a smooth running Nationals, or
prove to be precursors of time bombs waiting to explode.